W.S. Merwin: Across the river from New York, in a place called Union City, which is right up — it used to be, before that, West Hoboken — it is just up the hill from the Palisades, from Hoboken, and from my father’s church I could look down on the harbor. I was fascinated as a small child to kneel up at a window there and just spend hours watching the traffic on the river, the river traffic, which was quite different then, there was a lot more of it. Very beautiful, I thought, and I still have wonderfully clear images of it still there. I mean I can still see the ferry barges taking — I mean, not just the ferries, the passenger ferries, but these things that would take a whole train on a series of barges across the river, and ships going up and down in the afternoon light. It was very, very beautiful. Everything is gone. I mean the traffic is gone. The Hoboken harbor has changed completely. My father’s church has long since, many years ago — gone. And the house is still there, but unrecognizable. I’ve been back and seen it.